~ A Lampstand Foundation Blog

Church Helping Criminals

A major reason I developed the criminal reformation ministry of Lampstand is because the modern American Church—Catholic & Protestant—has had difficulty reforming criminals, as noted by James Hitchcock, quoting “a former Presbyterian minister, now working with drug addicts”:

“Contemporary churchmanship is awash in a kind of permissiveness which results in watered-down distortion of what true religion has been through the centuries. Religion has to do with subduing the ego, the voluntary taking up of a self-denial and service to a Higher Power….

“I believe organized religion frequently doesn’t get anywhere with addicts because it’s not honest enough. It’s caught up in niceness and gentleness and timidity and it isn’t tough enough.” (pp. 40-41) James Hitchcock (1979) Catholicism & Modernity: Confrontation or Capitulation? The Seabury Press, New York.